> I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of 2 million parts — all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
Oh but now it's so unimaginably worse than that. Boeing lost the contract for commercial crew to SpaceX, who was indeed the lowest bidder. But Boeing has connections, and got Congress to make NASA also give them a contract. So they did. And Boeing's contract ended up being worth about 50% more than the contract SpaceX got. It was expected Boeing was going to be the first to start launching crewed missions by a fairly wide margin. SpaceX started in 2020. Boeing started, right now.
Oh and the build up to this finale is no less... odd. Boeing did their pad abort test - demonstrating the ability for their capsule to rocket off on its on, like it might do from a failing rocket. And that test failed with only 2 out of 3 of the parachutes opening. But insert 'Boeing influence' - NASA decided it was a clear success. And not just any success, but a success so clearly successful that they simply let Boeing completely skip the launch abort test (where you'd to the same escape test, but in flight) and moved right on to complete unmanned tests to the ISS.
So they launch their first mission to the ISS, and completely miss the station leaving the craft in a potentially catastrophic scenario, though it does eventually make its way back to Earth. So NASA just pats them on the back 'Happens to us all! Just give it another go!' So they do, and on this flight 1/6th of the thrusters on the approach module failed, but by some act of God (and backup thrusters), the craft somehow managed to mate with the ISS. So of course NASA said, "Brilliant! Success! Bring on the humans!"
And that's where we are right now. And that is the company behind the rocket that's under you right now.
Though, considering the culture of normalization of deviance that developed in NASA's human spaceflight division during the Shuttle's 30-year track record of near and not-so-near misses, it's hard to imagine why we should expect NASA to demand anything different. These two organizations were made for each other.
Oh and the build up to this finale is no less... odd. Boeing did their pad abort test - demonstrating the ability for their capsule to rocket off on its on, like it might do from a failing rocket. And that test failed with only 2 out of 3 of the parachutes opening. But insert 'Boeing influence' - NASA decided it was a clear success. And not just any success, but a success so clearly successful that they simply let Boeing completely skip the launch abort test (where you'd to the same escape test, but in flight) and moved right on to complete unmanned tests to the ISS.
So they launch their first mission to the ISS, and completely miss the station leaving the craft in a potentially catastrophic scenario, though it does eventually make its way back to Earth. So NASA just pats them on the back 'Happens to us all! Just give it another go!' So they do, and on this flight 1/6th of the thrusters on the approach module failed, but by some act of God (and backup thrusters), the craft somehow managed to mate with the ISS. So of course NASA said, "Brilliant! Success! Bring on the humans!"
And that's where we are right now. And that is the company behind the rocket that's under you right now.